Chainmail - Etymology

Etymology

The origins of the word “mail” are not fully known. One theory is that it originally derives from the Latin word macula, meaning "spot" or “opacity” (as in macula of retina). Another theory relates the word to the old French “maillier”, meaning “to hammer” (a cognate of the modern English word “malleable”).

The first attestations of the word “mail” are in Old French and Anglo-Norman: “maille” “maile”, or “male” or other variants, which became “mailye” “maille” “maile”, “male”, or “meile” in Middle English.

Civilizations that used mail used different terms for each garment made from it. The standard terms for European mail armour derive from French: leggings are called chausses, a hood is a coif and mittens, mitons. A mail collar hanging from a helmet is a camail or aventail. A shirt made from mail is a hauberk if knee-length and a haubergeon if mid-thigh length. A mail shirt interwoven between two layers of fabric is called a jazerant. A waist-length coat in medieval Europe was called a byrnie, although the exact construction of a byrnie is unclear.

Noting that the byrnie was the "most highly valued piece of armour" to the Carolingian soldier, Bennet, Bradbury, DeVries, Dickie, and Jestice indicate that:

"There is some dispute among historians as to what exactly constituted the Carolingian byrnie. Relying... only on artistic and some literary sources because of the lack of archaeological examples, some believe that it was a heavy leather jacket with metal scales sewn onto it. It was also quite long, reaching below the hips and covering most of the arms. Other historians claim instead that the Carolingian byrnie was nothing more than a coat of mail, but longer and perhaps heavier than traditional early medieval mail. Without more certain evidence, this dispute will continue".

The modern usage of terms for mail armour is highly contested in popular and, to a lesser degree, academic culture. Medieval sources referred to armour of this type simply as “mail”, however “chain-mail” has become a commonly-used, if incorrect neologism first attested in Sir Walter Scott’s 1822 novel The Fortunes of Nigel. Since then the word “mail” has been commonly, if incorrectly, applied to other types of armour, such as in “plate-mail” (first attested in 1835). The more correct term is “plate armour”.